The Path to Redemption
by Pir8grl
Summary: Another speculation for the 50th.
1. Chapter 1

Twin cries of "Doctor!" faded away as twin transmat beams unceremoniously deposited two girls in a featureless cell.

The blonde scrambled to her feet first. "You all right, mate?"

"I think so, yeah," the brunette replied, straightening her dress.

"I'm Rose."

"Rose Tyler?"

"Yeah. So, if you know who I am, but I don't know who you are, that'd make you from his future, right?"

"That is way more complicated of a question then you might think, but yeah, let's just say I'm from his future. I'm Clara."

"Any idea where we are?" Rose asked, looking around the room.

"Not a clue. But I think I know why."

"Me too. We're bait, for the Doctor."

"Whoever did this knows him very well. Too well. Your Doctor will be so mad he won't be thinking straight."

"I can't imagine yours takin' this much better. They are the same man, after all." Rose looked at Clara with a curious expression, then laughed.

"What?"

"Sorry…just…laughing at myself, really. That time I met Sarah Jane Smith, I acted like such a jealous idiot…not sure why I'm takin' this so calmly."

"Maybe because there's two of them out there looking for us. And you've nothing to be jealous of, anyway. To your Doctor, you are the absolute center of creation. I'm just someone he caught a glimpse of, from the corner of his eye, once or twice."

"And to your Doctor, I'm just a memory."

Clara reached over and caught the other girl's hand. "Rose, you are so much more than that! You saved him, after the Time War. He wouldn't be the man I know today without you."

"That is quite correct, Miss Oswald," an imperious voice stated.

"Who's that? Where's it comin' from?" Rose hissed.

"Don't know," Clara whispered back.

"The Doctor would **_not_** be the man he is today with you - both of you. A pretty pair of fools - the Bad Wolf and the Impossible Girl, both blinded by your human concept of 'love.' A Time Lord has no need of such things. You, who absorbed the Time Vortex, costing the Doctor one of his regenerations, and you, who entered the Doctor's personal time stream, you will cost him another. Perhaps if I eliminate your corrupting influences, then the Doctor will conduct himself as befits a Time Lord."

"And perhaps, if more of us had been influenced by that glorious human concept of love, the Time War need never have happened."

"Wait…I know that voice," Clara whispered.

"And if you're going to be such a damn pompous ass," that gruff voice continued, "you might try addressing the young lady correctly. She was born on Gallifrey, at least once that I know of. Isn't that right, my lady Clara?"

"Yes, that's right," she affirmed. '_Long story_,' she mouthed to Rose.

"Insolence!"

"I've been hearing that since my days at the Academy. I didn't care then, and I care less now. I have lost **_so_** much…I won't lose these two."

"What are they to you?" that other voice sneered.

"If you have to ask, you'll never understand."

Sensing that something was about to happen, Rose edged closer to Clara and grabbed her hand.

"Now then, girls…" An open doorway suddenly appeared in the once blank wall. "**RUN**!"

That was the very first word the Doctor had ever spoken to her, and Rose reacted instinctively, pelting out the doorway and dragging Clara along with her. The corridor was rocked with blasts of energy as the two voices continued to bellow at each other. The two unseen titans seemed more intent on warring with one another than pursuing Clara and Rose, so they seized that advantage and kept running.

"Any ideas where we're headed?" Clara gasped.

"Away from them!" Rose said emphatically.

"Agreed!"

They sped down a flight of stairs and burst through a doorway, into a corridor which seemed markedly more quiet. They paused to catch their breath, both trying desperately to still their ragged gasps for air.

"Wait…did you hear that?" Clara asked.

"Clara!"

"Rose!"

"In here!" Rose called. "We're in here!"

The sound of two sonic screwdrivers demolishing one lock was rather overpowering in the confines of the hallway, but neither Rose nor Clara was at all inclined to complain.

Clara felt herself swept up into a breathtakingly tight embrace. "I'm here," she whispered against her Doctor's neck. "I'm here. I'm all right."

"I thought I'd lost you," he mumbled against her hair. "Both of you," he added, glancing over at Rose and her Doctor, locked in an equally fierce embrace.

"What happened?" Rose's Doctor asked.

There was a confused babble about transmat beams and cells without doors and voices from the ceiling that neither Doctor entirely understood.

"I think we need to find a safer place to discuss this," Clara's Doctor said.

"Agreed," his counterpart replied. "Rose," he asked gently, "how did you get free of the cell?"

"I don't know, exactly", she replied, her voice muffled against his suit jacket.

"I do," Clara replied firmly.

Her Doctor pressed a kiss to her forehead. "How, Clara?"

"It was you. It was that other you, the one you refuse to acknowledge. He saved us." The Doctor's face turned stony, and he tried to look away, but Clara reached up and caught his face in her hands, gently forcing him to meet her eyes. "He's you, and no matter what he's done, there's still good in him."


	2. Chapter 2

_**"This isn't a ghost story, it's a love story!" **_

And it had been, ever since he'd first stepped inside the TARDIS. A love affair with the all the glory and wonder of universe - so many things to see and hear and taste, and people to share it all with. So how had all that joy and wonder led him here, to a dark place controlled by an unseen madman, placing two of the most precious people in all of his existence in such terrible jeopardy?

"Doctor?" Clara asked in a worried tone that suggested it wasn't the first time she'd called him.

"Yes?" he asked abruptly.

She squeezed his hand. "You zoned out on me for a minute, there."

"Sorry. Just thinking. No sign of the TARDIS?" he asked his other self.

"No. None a'tall. And no idea of how we came to be here."

A large explosion shook the structure above them.

Rose looked around nervously. "Look, can we just give those two some distance to settle their differences?"

"Brilliant idea!" her Doctor concurred, grabbing her hand and heading for the door.

* * *

They ran until they were out of sight of the building with the cells, and the two humans in the party were thoroughly out of breath. Neither Time Lord thought for a moment that physical distance would actually keep them safe, not in this bizarre nightmare of a place, but the illusion of safety was all they had to offer their companions just then.

"Tell us about the one who took you," Rose's Doctor asked, once the girls had managed to catch their breath.

"It was just a voice, from the ceiling or somewhere. Couldn't really tell," Rose began.

"Tell us about the voice," Clara's Doctor prompted.

"It was cold," Clara stated, "and arrogant."

"But more than that," Rose continued. "It was like he just expected you to do what he wanted…like he really believed that he was king of the world, or something."

"And he knew who we were, our names and what we'd done," Clara added. "He called me the Impossible Girl. No one but you has ever called me that."

"He knew about me, too," Rose continued, "he knew that I was Bad Wolf, and about the Time Vortex, and he said…he said that I'd cost you one of your regenerations." Her expression was stricken. "I'm so sorry…I only meant to save you…I didn't mean…"

Clara's Doctor reached out involuntarily. "Rose…"

Clara wrapped both hands around his arm, pulling him back a bit to give the other two a semblance of privacy. "Shh…no…let him," she whispered.

The other Doctor shot her a grateful look before turning to Rose. "Rose, look at me." He gently tucked a hand under her chin, tipping her face up to his. "You didn't cost me anything, Rose. I was going to die there anyway, I knew that from the moment I decided to send you home. I was alone and unarmed against the Emperor of the Daleks. They were going to exterminate me…and I was going to let them.

"Everything in life is a choice, Rose. A Time Lord has the **_choice_** to regenerate, or simply die. I was ready to die until you came back, and gave me a reason to live. You did save me. I'm here because of you."

Rose looked up at him, smiling despite the tears shining in her eyes. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

A discreet few steps away, Clara leaned her head against her Doctor's arm, a faint sheen of tears sparkling in her eyes as she watched his former self interacting with the great love of his life. She wondered, briefly, and a tiny bit enviously, if he'd ever look at her like that. If she could have seen the look in his green eyes just then, she wouldn't have had to wonder at all.


	3. Chapter 3

Clara looked up at her Doctor. "Any idea who that voice in the ceiling belonged to?"

"An idea, yes, but it's rather imp- Sorry. I really need to remove that word from my vocabulary, don't I?"

"So," Clara continued, "who is this person whose presence is extremely highly improbable, but just short of impossible? Because I'm the only impossible person allowed in your life."

"Yes, you are," he replied, smiling just a bit for her, as she'd intended. "From your description, it sounds almost like Rassilon, which **_really _**shouldn't be possible."

"Except that he's managed to get loose once before," the other Doctor offered, coming over with Rose to join the discussion.

"Yes, but that was a rather extraordinary circumstance."

"And this isn't?"

"Point taken, but it feels different."

"And neither one of you has any idea where we actually are?" Rose asked.

"No," her Doctor replied. "I'm not even convinced that this is a real place."

"I think I know where we are," Clara interjected.

"And where's that?" her Doctor asked curiously.

"I think we're inside your head, somehow."

"That's ridiculous!" he scoffed, just a little too quickly and too rudely.

"Not necessarily," the other Doctor said thoughtfully. "Why do you think that, Clara?"

"Because everything here is him…you…oh, this is so confusing!"

"Don't fuss over your grammar right now. I think you're on to something. Keep going. Why do you think we're inside my head?"

"Everything in here is about you. You're the tenth Doctor, his most recent past existence. Rose is one of the most important people in his entire life."

"So are you. You've been with us since the very beginning."

"Yes, yes, that's all very interesting, but how would Rassilon get inside my head?" Clara's Doctor said rather petulantly.

"Maybe he's not really, properly real," Clara mused. "The things he said, it was almost as if he was a…a representation of all the reasons you ran away from home in the first place."

"That is brilliant!" Rose's Doctor enthused.

"No, it's not!"

"Why're you being so pig-headed about this idea?" Rose demanded, stung by the Doctor's behavior towards Clara. "Where do **_you_** think we are, Doctor?"

"Certainly not inside my own head!"

"What are you so afraid of?" his counterpart asked wisely.

"It's because that other Doctor is here, too," Clara stated. "The one you tried so hard to forget."

"He has no right to that name!" her Doctor exclaimed wildly. "He gave that up a long time ago, when he went against everything I've ever stood for. He's not the Doctor."

Clara's eyes were drowning with infinite sorrow as she reached out to take both his hands. "But he is **_you_**."


	4. Chapter 4

"I don't understand what you're talkin' about," Rose said, not at all fancying the strange expressions on either Doctor's face.

"When I was inside his time stream," Clara began, "I saw all his different faces, all eleven Doctors, but then I saw someone else. The Doctor called him his secret, and said that he'd broken a promise. He said that it was him, but not the Doctor."

Rose turned to her Doctor and took his hand reassuringly. "It's the Time War, isn't it? You've told me all about it, and I know you had to do terrible things, but I also know how much good you've done, how many people you've saved. And you know that I love you, right? I love all of you, forever."

His hand convulsed around hers, but he refused to meet her eyes, instead staring intently at the ground. "Oh, Rose…the only one who knows **_all_** about the Time War is me. There are things…if you ever even suspected…you'd run screaming from me and never look back."

"When 'ave I ever run away from anything you've shown me? Whatever it is, whatever you think is so bad…just tell me."

"It doesn't matter, Rose," Clara said softly.

"How can you say that? You, of all people?"

"Because this isn't about us. It doesn't matter how much we love him; the only thing that can save us all right now, is for him to forgive himself."

"Some things are unforgivable, Clara," her Doctor muttered.

"Do I really regenerate into such a dunderhead?" that gruff, unseen voice complained.

Clara gasped back a peal of laughter, because that particular insult was just so, well **_insulting. _**

"Are you even listening to what these two rather extraordinary young ladies have been saying? Because it's important, and one of them just said something she's never said aloud to you before, and you just stand there **_wallowing_**."

"Is that…?" Rose whispered to Clara.

"Yes."

"Is there a way to see you?" Rose asked. "It's a bit weird, talkin' to thin air."

"Your wish is my command." A battered, weather-beaten man who matched the gravelly voice materialized. "Hello again, my lady Clara."

"Hello," she replied faintly.

Rose took a hesitant step towards the newcomer.

"Rose, stay back," her Doctor warned, reaching out to catch her sleeve.

"Why should I?" she replied, more sharply than usual as she shook her arm free of his grasp. "He's done nothin' to hurt me. In fact, he saved me an' Clara." She studied this strange, new Doctor intently. "You're a bit like the Doctor when I first met him."

"We were both born of the war, Rose," he explained gently. "A certain similarity is to be expected."

"Will you tell us what happened?" Clara asked.

The other Doctor straightened his shoulders and spoke with quiet dignity. "I destroyed two sentient races, one of them my own."

"Did you have any choice?" Rose asked.

"There is **_always_** a choice," Clara's Doctor insisted.

"You, hush," Clara said firmly. "You wouldn't answer me. He's at least trying."

"You can't imagine what it was like. The Daleks were infected with the madness of Davros; I knew that, I expected it. What I didn't expect was the madness of my own people. To be confronted by one of the greatest heroes of my civilization, only to have him be revealed as even more twisted and corrupt than the creature who created the Daleks…"

"That is a **_lot_** of crazy," Rose breathed.

He smiled a bit at that, but then, Rose had always had that effect on the Doctor, whichever incarnation he happened to be. It was amazing what that smile did for his craggy face. Clara thought she could see a touch of her own Doctor there, too.

"What happened next?" Clara asked.

"They burned. All of them. It was…I was so sure at the time…it was the only way…the only way to keep their mutual insanity from sweeping out into the universe." A lone tear trailed down his cheek and his voice sank down to a haunted whisper. "Everything burned."

"And you?" Rose murmured, coming close enough to take his roughened hand in her own.

"I burned, too. I wanted nothing more in that instant than to just burn along with everything I'd ever loved, and everything I'd ever hated, but I knew that the war must be time locked, so that the madness would be contained, and so, I forced myself to regenerate, into the Doctor that you would eventually meet, Rose."

"An' you were alone, that whole time?" Rose asked, her eyes filled, not with the horror he expected, but rather, with compassion.

He nodded wearily.

"Well, you're not alone now," Rose said decisively, wrapping both arms around him.

After a moment, Clara followed suit.

The old man simply stood there for a long, long moment, hardly daring to breath.

"We're not made of glass, you know," Clara reminded him gently. She felt his chuckle as a dull rumble against her cheek as he slipped his arms around her and Rose, tentatively at first, then with the fierce strength she'd come to know from her own Doctor.


	5. Chapter 5

The Doctor-who-wasn't reveled in Rose and Clara's embrace, in the sensation of being treated like a person, instead of a monster, for the first time that he could remember. He kissed each girl's forehead gently before releasing them and stepping back a pace.

"You really are quite amazing. I only hope that those two appreciate you properly."

The other two Doctors had the good grace to look thoroughly embarrassed.

"What do we call you?" Clara asked. "He said you're not the Doctor, but…who are you? What's your name?"

"I don't have one. Not any more. When I did…what I did…eight voices inside my head - the same eight voices that collectively couldn't come up with a better solution - cried out that I wasn't them any more. That I wasn't entitled to the name 'Doctor.' Since then, well, it's not like there's been anyone else for me to speak to."

"That's horrible!" Rose gasped.

"All right then," Clara continued. "Answer me this: if you hadn't ended the war when you did, what would have happened to the Earth?"

"That's an impossible question," her Doctor protested.

"And I'm the impossible girl, remember?"

"If one happens to be both a genius and a Time Lord, there are extremely reliable predictions that can be made from viewing all the possible time lines," the other answered.

"Go on," Clara encouraged.

"Annihilation. At the hands of one side, or the other, or both, by getting caught in the crossfire. Does it really matter which?"

"You don't know that for certain!" Rose's Doctor protested, albeit feebly.

"So, the Earth would have been destroyed, before Clara or me were even born?" Rose asked softly.

"Rose," her Doctor entreated, "even for you…two entire sentient races…"

"An' I'd never expect you to do somethin' like that, just for me, but don't you see? You saved the Earth, **_again_**, and all the other worlds out there that would have burned."

A lightening bolt split the sky, followed closely by a deafening clap of thunder.

"Speaking of saving the Earth, weren't you all doing something, before you ended up here?"

"Trying to solve a mystery and save the Earth," Clara answered. "The usual."

"Don't you think it's time you got out of here and went back to saving the world?"

"Love to, but I don't think it's up to us…I think this one's all on them," Clara said, nodding towards the Doctors.

Her Doctor gazed back at her, his ancient green eyes brimming with loss and sorrow and shame. "Clara, I told you, the name I chose, it was a promise I made; a promise to help people, not to willingly participate in the wholesale destruction of two races."

"Being a doctor, even just a human medical doctor, means having to make hard choices sometimes," Clara responded. "What if a patient's leg is crushed, and the flesh and bone are rotting away? What would you do then?"

"Amputate the damaged limb."

"Why?"

"To preserve the rest of the body and save the patient's life."

"So, what do you call someone who was forced to sacrifice a part of creation, to protect the rest of it?"

Her Doctor drew in a ragged breath. "A healer…a doctor."

"The Doctor," Rose's own Doctor added.


	6. Chapter 6

There was another flash of lightening, and the ground surged with the force of an earthquake. The two Doctors, Rose, and Clara found themselves tossed about -

- only to land in an unceremonious heap on the floor of the TARDIS control room.

Clara's Doctor sat up abruptly. "Clara?"

"I'm here. I'm fine."

He pulled her carefully upright, gently running his fingers through her hair, checking her for injuries. "All right?" Clara nodded, and he brushed his lips briefly against her forehead. "Rose? Doctor?"

"We're fine," his counterpart replied, clutching Rose tightly in his arms.

"Was that real?" Rose asked.

"The bruises say 'yes,'" Clara said wryly.

"Sorry," her Doctor muttered sheepishly.

Rose softly stroked her Doctor's face, staring into his warm, brown eyes. "There's something…it's like a bit of tension you've been carrying around for so long that you don't even think about it anymore is just…gone."

"It's as if there was a hole inside my mind, and now it's been fixed," he replied thoughtfully.

"Yes," Clara's Doctor concurred. "Where there was eleven of us before, now there's twelve."

"Will we ever see him again?" Clara wondered.

"I shouldn't think so," her Doctor replied. "It's really never a good idea for there to be more than one of me in the same place. As wonderful as it's been to see you again," he said, with a fond glance at Rose, "we really need to finish this and get you two back where you belong."

Rose smiled up at her Doctor, and he grinned back, grabbing her hand and leading her out of the TARDIS.

Clara made to follow them, but her Doctor caught her hand. "And you…you saved me, again."

"That's what I do," she murmured, looking up at him through her lashes.

"Clara, you said something back there-"

She hushed him with a gentle hand against his lips. "Later," she promised. "After we save the world."

He smiled, then lightly kissed the tips of her fingers before clasping her hand tightly in his own. "Right then, Clara Oswald, let's go save the world!"


End file.
